The human eye is most sensitive to detail in the region of a displayed image that is projected onto the fovea, as the fovea contains the highest density of cones within the retina. The retina's ability to perceive detail thus decreases with distance from the fovea. Virtual reality (VR) systems, augmented reality (AR) systems, and other display systems leverage this characteristic of the retina in a process referred to as foveal rendering, in which the region of an image that is the focus of the eye (that is, falls upon the fovea) is rendered with a higher resolution, while the remainder of the image is rendered at a lower resolution. Foveal rendering thus typically has a lower computational load than conventional full-resolution rendering processes. However, conventional displays used for VR or AR typically have a constant or uniform display pixel density across the entire display panel, due at least in part to the requirement that the display be capable of providing an image to the fovea of a user's eye from any area of the display that the user may gaze upon. As a result, it is still necessary to deliver high-resolution pixel data to drive such conventional display panels. Accordingly, while computational load may be reduced in rendering the display image, the implementation of foveal rendering in conjunction with a conventional display does not reduce the bandwidth requirements for transmitting display data to the display, nor does it reduce the power consumed by the display backplane in order to clock in the pixel data for the foveally-rendered display image.